328 Heniy Skene, Esq., on the Albanians. 



whole population of the place was drawn by him into an am- 

 buscade, where seven hundred and thirty of them were mas- 

 sacred, and the rest, who had settled or were born at Gardiki 

 after the insult, were sent to Prevesa to be embarked as 

 slaves. Ali was stirred on by the malignant vindictiveness 

 of his sister, who left him neither rest nor quiet until the 

 bloody deed was done. She herself perpetrated the most 

 unheard-of cruelties on the persons of the women of Gardiki, 

 and she had a matress made of the hair of her victims, on 

 which she slept ever after. Many of the inhabitants who 

 had been inveigled into the town of Jannina under various 

 pretences, were seized and thrown into the lake on the same 

 day ; and the place where the others were murdered was 

 built up, when they were all dead, and the bodies were left 

 unburied. Ali had a stone tablet placed over the principal 

 entrance, now closed for ever, with an inscription in Modern 

 Greek, recording the facts, and containing the words, " Thus 

 perish all the enemies of Ali.'' He fired the first shot him- 

 self, as he sat in his carriage at the gate. Several of the 

 principal Gardikiotes having been absent at the time of these 

 events, he found means of laying hold of them subsequently, 

 when he put them to death, and sent their bodies to rot in 

 the same court yard with those of their countrymen. The 

 destruction of Gardiki, a town of six thousand inhabitants, 

 which was condemned never to be occupied again, took place 

 in the year 1812 ; and it was a monument of private ven- 

 geance, unparalleled in history, ancient or modern. 



The Ghegh and Mirdite Albanians were intended to have 

 been the executioners, but they obstinately and nobly refused ; 

 the Blacks were then called upon to fire, and Zougas having 

 been but lately pardoned, with his followers, for previous 

 misdeeds as Klephti, he thought that it would be unsafe to 

 decline. The usual headsmen in European Turkey are chosen 

 from among Gipsies, who possess skill in this, as well as 

 many other professions of doubtful respectability. 



There are a great many Gipsies in these provinces, where 

 they are called Tshingaries, probably a corruption of the 

 Italian word Zingari. Several villages on the coast between 

 Alessio and Durazzo, are inhabited exclusively by these 



